Best selling Australian author Tea Cooper lives in a time warp – a postcard-perfect village two hours from Sydney with 19th-century sandstone buildings, and timber slab cottages which leave you feeling you could be back in the 1830s.

Hi there, I’m your host Jenny Wheeler and today Tea talks about how her surroundings inspire her popular historic fiction, and what she’d change if she was doing it all again.

Six things you’ll learn from this Joys of Binge Reading episode:

Why her first schoolgirl fiction nearly got her expelled 

How 'alpacas and proteas' provided fuel for rural romance

Her passion for Wollombi -  the Gateway to the Hunter Valley

Her gradual morph from romance to historical mystery

The writers she admires most

What she'd do differently second time around

Where to find Tea Cooper: 

Website: http://www.teacooperauthor.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TeaCooper/

What follows is a "near as" transcript of our conversation, not word for word but pretty close to it, with links to important mentions.

Jenny: But now, here’s Tea. .  Hello there Tea and welcome to the show, it’s great to have you with us.

Tea Cooper - Historical mysteries author

Tea: Thank you very much for the invitation, it's lovely to be talking with you.

Jenny: Beginning at the beginning - was there a “Once Upon A Time" moment when you decided you wanted to write fiction?  And if there was a catalyst, what was it?

Tea: I can't really remember a time when I didn't want to write stories.  I was one of those little girls who stayed in her bedroom, and made little books, sewing the sides together and things like that. But I guess the light bulb moment was when I was in boarding school, and a group of us decided to write a story on the school gardener. It did get us into trouble, and we had to go our separate ways! The power of words if you like, and how believable a fiction story can be. So I suppose if there was a catalyst, it was that. Two of us actually did go onto work as journalists, so it honestly had an impact on us.

Jenny: Just allowing myself to be diverted for a moment- these days if girls started to write stories like that, they'd probably be congratulated on their initiative, wouldn't they!

Tea: It was a long time ago, things have changed a lot since then!

Jenny: Was the gardener particularly spunky?

Tea: No! He was bald and probably forty, which seemed really old. It was an all girls school, so he was the only male on the premises, the poor guy.

Jenny: It's funny; I had a similar sort of education and even the guys that came in to lay the carpet - well men were so rare that you ogled them all, didn't you?

Tea: Yes, absolutely! I'm glad you understand. Some people look at me a bit sideways and say well did you have a problem? But I think that was the catalyst actually. It wasn't a nice story!

Jenny: But you didn't get expelled I hope?

Tea: Yes- let's not go there! It was a long time ago. Some people got expelled and others stayed, but it wasn't very nice so we left afterwards. I would like to point out that we're all still very good friends. So that's quite interesting!

Jenny: Absolutely, a bonding experience. No long term damage hopefully! So it's understandable then that you were drawn into romance when you started to write?

Tea: It was a long time ago when I first decided to write a contemporary romance. I found a Mills and Boon competition in the Women's Weekly, so I wrote a story and sent it off. It was a very rainy school holidays, because I was teaching then. Anyway, I sent it off and I won second prize. I won a bottle of perfume but I didn't get the contract I was hoping for. I don't really know why I started with contemporary, because history has always been my first love. Where the mystery bits come from I'm not quite sure- that sort of evolved. Perhaps I thought it'd be easier to write a contemporary romance.